Windows Server 2008

Mid-market IT professionals interested in learning more about the upcoming Essential Business Server solution should tune into this show on BlogTalkRadio.  Microsoft's Steve VanRoekel and Arlin Sorensen of Heartland Technology Solutions talk about the product, how it will help IT pros, and what it will mean for VARs and system integrators.

Joel Sider

We all know that what we do is way cooler than having a real job!  Do you think those guys in accounting have their own Comic Series? – HECK NO!  The HHH Comic series launches today: Signup for the RSS feed and hang on for the ride!

Ken Henderson passed away this last Sunday. My condolences go out to his family, friends, and coworkers. I owe so much to Ken, if it wasn't for his books I would not be where I am today.

 

Ken, You will be missed.

 

My latest (and only) book has been published, the publisher is O'Reilly. The URL is http://www.oreillymaker.com/

Let me know what you think.

This question is asked every now and then so I decided to do a little blog post. How can you quickly without writing a bunch of OR statements determince if any columns have a NULL value, a value of 0 or if the value is 0 or NULL?
To test for NULL is very easy, you just concatenate the columns since NULL + anything else is always NULL. Okay that also depends on a setting.

Run this

SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
SELECT NULL + '1' --NULL

SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL OFF
SELECT NULL + '1' --1

As you can see if CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL is OFF then the result is 1

Now take a look at this


SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
SELECT NULL + 1 --NULL

 

SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL OFF
SELECT NULL + 1 --NULL


So with numeric values it behaves differently. Either way by default CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL is set to on
To test for NULLS or zeroes you use NULLIF
To test for zeros you can combine COALESCE and NULLIF

Here is the code which shows all of that

CREATE TABLE #test(column1 int,column2 varchar(4),column3 float)

INSERT #test VALUES(2,'2',2)
INSERT #test VALUES(0,'1',0)
INSERT #test VALUES(null,'1',0)
INSERT #test VALUES(1,null,0)
INSERT #test VALUES(0,'1',null)
INSERT #test VALUES(null,null,null)



--Any column is Null
SELECT * FROM #test
WHERE column1 + column2+column3 is null

Output
NULL 1 0.0
1 NULL 0.0
0 1 NULL
NULL NULL NULL

 

--Any column is Null or zero
SELECT * FROM #test
WHERE NULLIF(column1,0) + NULLIF(column2,0)+NULLIF(column3,0) is null

Output
-------------------
0 1 0.0
NULL 1 0.0
1 NULL 0.0
0 1 NULL
NULL NULL NULL


 

--Any column is zero
SELECT * FROM #test
WHERE NULLIF(COALESCE(column1,1),0) +
NULLIF(COALESCE(column2,1),0)+
NULLIF(COALESCE(column3,1),0) is null

Output
-------------------
0 1 0.0
NULL 1 0.0
1 NULL 0.0
0 1 NULL

 
DROP TABLE #test

Hey everybody – it’s me again, Lone Server.  Thanks for watching my video and sending all of your words of encouragement this past week.  I even got an offer to retire at someone’s “beautiful server farm upstate.”  Not happening.  I’m not giving in and joining your server petting zoo just yet.  Upgrade is coming, I can feel it!    < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

For those of you into Schadenfreude, there’s a great technical blow-by-blow explanation of how my world was destroyed up on TechNet Edge. Be warned: It’s fairly brutal. Jeff Toews, a member of the Microsoft.com Operations Engineering Team that manages, maintains, and deploys all of the MS.com servers, gets interviewed by an evangelist named David Tesar. First they talk about how cool my datacenter is, then they go into bloody detail about how it all got ripped away from me (and yes, they do call me out by name, specifically at 33:15). Oh, it’s a happy little chat. Like a walk in the park. Or, in my case, a graveyard.

 

But what’s the point of self-pity?  And fortunately, all of this free time has given me the opportunity to get out on the web and start making hundreds of new friends. The 08’s are too busy doing MY job to make profiles for themselves, so I’m the most popular server on Facebook.

 

Scrabulous, anyone?

Due to the Martin Luther King holiday in the U.S. on Monday, it was a fairly quiet day on the roads and in the office. But there was a flurry of server virtualization news, news and news out of Redmond. Here are the lightlights:< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

• Acquisition of Calista Technologies, whose virtual desktop platform improves the remote desktop experience for running 3D graphics and multimedia capabilities to RDP. For one thing, Calista's technology reduces network bandwidth requirements and can accelerate data rates by as much as 20X. For those of you who are fans of Terminal Services, this acquisition will make TS use much better. Neal Margulis, the founder of Calista, posted here about his views on joining Microsoft.
• Do you want to run Windows Vista on a server? If so, now you can do so at a lower price point. Check out Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop allows you to run Windows in virtual machines on servers and access them from either PCs or thin clients. The annual subscription to Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop is now roughly $23 per desktop for rich clients covered by Software Assurance for Windows Client. If you want to run thin-clients, you can purchase a subscription for an estimated retail price of $110 per desktop.
• Citrix is developing software that will easily transfer virtual machines between the Xen hypervisor in Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to ensure greater interoperability. The tool, which is scheduled to be available to beta test in Q2 2008, will transfer all configuration information and driver set of the virtual machines in the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk image format to run with Hyper-V.
• From the news release, “XenDesktop, planned for release in second quarter 2008, will support and extend Windows Server 2008 shortly after the availability of Hyper-V”
• Citrix will extend support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center in all its virtualization products: XenDesktop, Presentation Server and XenServer.
• a future version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager will support managing Citrix XenServer, and Citrix plans to integrate Hyper-V with Citrix XenServer.
• And Microsoft has expanded technical support to running MS Office applications via SoftGrid 4.2 or MS Application Virtualization 4.5. Microsoft application virtualization allows customers to pre-configure applications for offline use on a client PC; so end users can be fully productive on their machine, even when they are offline.
• Four new Solutions Accelerators will help you assess, plan, deploy and secure MS virtualization products [Hyper-V, SoftGrid, Terminal Services]. They’re available in beta form now, and will be GA at the end of February.

All of this news, as well as an email from Bob Muglia and today’s webcast, can be accessed here.

Patrick

Hello folks,

 My name is Justin Graham. My sole lot in life is to make sure IT Professionals have what they need to get a head start on Windows Server 2008. I have no other purpose really, my team is not in the Super Bowl, I work 5.4*10^12 hours per week, and I eat ramen still. The good part of this is I'm developing some exciting things for the IT Pro Community for the Launch.

 First, www.heroescommunitylaunch.com. Visit this website, perhaps multiple times a day, to find the latest information on localized training events held in your area. This is our effort to bring the content to YOU. If there is no local launch event in your area listed on www.heroeshappenhere.com, then find one here.

 Second, webcasts, ooooo webcasts. Starting today (January 21st for those who worked the weekend and don't know what day it is, or even where you are) we are delivering webcasts on key technologies in Windows  Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio. These are being delivered via TechNet Webcasts so head over there (http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/windowsserver2008.aspx?tab=webcasts) and check out what we have to offer. I'll be posting more as we add sessions to the schedule.

 Pleased to meet you all, if you have feedback, email communitylaunch@microsoft.com.

 Cheers,

 - Justin

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